"Over a 10! This game is just too much!!!"

THE Best fighting game of all time, on the Nintendo GameCube, WITH Nintendo characters! Need an awesome multiplayer? Get this. Wish this game had Lan/Online abilities? Me too, sadly it doesn’t yet (yes I added a YET). I can’t find any flaws with this game whatsoever, so if you think this game sucks somehow, play it more than just 10 mins, and do it on an easier mode. The best thing about the game is, it doesn’t get old. If you unlock the characters and are bored, then take out the memory card, either put in a new one, or don’t put in one, and start again! That cured my boredom for this game, well, part of it.

Graphics: 12/10Probably the greatest graphics for a Nintendo Character fighting game, Link looks good in this one compared to Soul Calibur 2 (meaning, looks more like Link than anything else). This game has nice smooth models, an amazing beginning movie, and the levels are done so well, I am just wondering, WHAT THE HECK DID THEY USE?!?!? The camera can get annoying on some parts of some levels, but that is only in multiplayer, or if you are on one side of the level and your opponent is on the other. Like I said before, the characters and levels are amazing, I can’t find a flaw with them. The colors are just about perfect, the animations are good, and the camera mode, where you zoom in and take pictures, even has the smallest good detail that makes it better, also if you look into the background closely on some levels, you will find some stuff from past games (Example: Onett and Fourside). Another great thing about the graphics is, in adventure mode, the first level, you get to see the old Goombas, Koopas, Flying Koopas, etc… from the first Mario games from back when. They are rendered in great 3d, so I hope they include them in a 3d Mario game someday. So if you say these graphics and bad, play a game other than Halo. I give this a 12 because of the sweetness of it.

Game play: 10/10Awesome fighting game. Everything you need, well, except for secret special moves, which is why it didn’t get over a 10. This game has MANY modes, even a part in the game where you have to collect some 280 trophies (I Think, or 190). You can do many things in multiplayer mode too, such as fast mode, invisible mode, giant mode, etc… I can’t even think of everything you can do in the game play there is just SOO much! You can unlock characters, fight computers, fight computers in those special modes, do adventure mode, which is a long adventure type thing you can go on, once you beat that and the regular mode with all characters, you can unlock All-Star mode, which is fighting EVERY character there is in the game, and doing it with only 3 hearts that it gives you. The game play AND graphics are soo good that you could get hooked on this game for a LONG time (I think I played it for almost 10 hours straight once…) The moves your player has are pretty cool, such as Ness’s PK Flash and PK Thunder, Links Boomerang, Mario and Luigi’s Fireballs, etc… again. There is a LOT more to say, but I don’t want to spoil anything for you guys/girls. There is also a cool mode where you beat a certain number or what seems like missions. The total number of them is 51, but you have to beat a certain number of them to unlock them all, which is good and bad. Good: More time to do stuff, makes the game more fun. Bad: Some of them can really piss you off, which isn’t very fun, but hey, the more you play it, the more you should get better at it!

Story: 5/10This doesn’t really have a story to it, but if it did, it would be to beat everyone and get rid of the evil Master Hand. It would also be to get trophies, but so far, I don’t think it has much of a story to it. The only area that really has a story, is Adventure mode, where you go through many levels trying to get to the end, and then defeat Bowser. You go through, what seems like, a whole galaxy trying to find him, but it takes awhile. There are around 10-12 levels, I haven’t played that area in awhile, so I’m not positive. I give this a 5 due to the fact that is has a story, but it’s not well-defined.

Sound: 11/10Greatest sound a fighting game could have, and the best part is, you can listen to it in a sound track kind of form, in Options I think, I can’t quite remember. The sound of each levels, each special effect, and the echoes and stuff are amazing. I can’t really find a flaw with it, except for the fact that some of the music needs to be more of the game, like Earthbound, one of the music themes has nothing to do with the game, but it’s there anyway. Some sound effects, such as echoes, you hear during the adventure mode, where it looks like Link’s level, when you hit one of the re-dead(s), you can hear your character’s voice kind of echo, which is a cool effect. I think once I actually got hooked on the Sound Test mode, on one of the themes for the boss levels, such as Master Hand’s level and Giga Bowser’s level. I give this an 11 out of 10 because some of my most favorite music/themes are in this game!

Controls: 10/10The controls are great! Nothing truly confusing, unless you are Ness and aren’t good with the PK Thunder ability. You can be new at it and beat the crap out of a level 2 or 3 computer, or even someone good at it, unless you are really bad at jumping, but what I am saying is, it’s not hard at all to learn the controls, just if you have never played the gamecube before and absolutely hate the controller, then I’d tell you to buy the ps2 controller adapter and use that, but other than that, easy controls, easy enough for a 3-5 year old to use. I think all the buttons are assigned to a specific move, or if you do more than one, a special kind of move. The Z button is used to grab people, and L & R buttons are used to block, and all the others are kind of random, depending on your character. I give the controls a 10 due to the fact that they are good and easy to use.

Replay Value: 15/10Once you play, you won’t stop, unless you hate fighting games. I absolutely love this game, it’s my favorite gamecube game of all that are out there today! I can’t get enough of this game at parties, competitions (though I have yet to go to one, sadly…), with friends, or just being home along bored. I continue to play it day and night sometimes. The play time for it is more than enough for someone, I’d say around 1000 hours or more, due to the fact that you have to unlock lots of characters, gain up their usage, and break records, get trophies, and probably more stuff I’ve never found out you could do, and I’ve owned it since like, 2 or 3 weeks after it’s release. Since you can’t truly beat the game, you will just play it over and over again, from battle to battle, but if you DO truly beat the game, then it’s fun to unlock the characters again, see how fast you can do it, so I say it has a great reply value.

Overall: 12/10Overall, I give this a 12/10. Greatest GCN game of all time, unless they make another one, I don’t think any will surpass it, unless they make a super exciting long awesome sound and graphics game, which probably won’t happen soon. I would definitely recommend this to someone, I’d buy them this, 2 controllers (for several reasons, such as you might wear out one, and if you don’t have 4 for multiplayer), and I’d probably buy them a memory card too, unless you/they have a 251 block memory card, that should hold that and many other games. I think someone should rent it too, JUST IN CASE they for some reason didn’t like it, such as they like gory fighting games. If you have a party, own a GCN with 4 controllers, at least, then you MUST have this game, most likely you will be playing this game as much as you would Mario Party. Some people might get so into it that you would either get into a fight, or finally buy the game. The good thing about buying the game now, is that it’s a Player’s Choice (don’t have anything against that, I think it should be THEE one and only Player’s Choice), which means that it’s only $20!!!